Can Russia create its own analogue of the American ground-based GLSDB bomb?

A year and a half after the start of the Northern Military District, certain trends began to be visible at the front and in the rear, giving grounds for cautious hope for a gradual turnaround in the situation in Russia’s favor. The bloody experience was not in vain, and our army is far from what it was before February 24, 2022. Sooner or later, the Russian Armed Forces will still have to launch their own large-scale counteroffensive.

"Winged Babies"

A few days earlier, the Reporter published publication, in which problems of a military-technical nature were indicated that should have been resolved before an offensive with decisive goals, so as not to have a hard time, like the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Among other things, a desire was expressed to “give wings” not only to aerial bombs of caliber 500, 1500 kg and above, but also to their smaller brothers - 250 kg and even 100 kg. As it turned out, not everyone found the “winged little ones” useful, preferring a heavy-duty caliber.



Well, to destroy Ukrainian fortified areas, which have been built into a continuous layered defense over the years of the Minsk agreements in the Donbass, the use of one and a half and three-ton air bombs dropped outside the range of medium-range air defense systems really seems to be the best solution. However, the situation will change somewhat if you have to go on a counter-offensive, carry out deep breakthroughs, suppress enemy air defenses and wage a war of maneuver.

And this is where the “winged babies” of 250 and 100 kg caliber, which a front-line bomber can drop tens per combat mission, will come in handy. To better understand the essence of the issue, it is worth looking at foreign experience.

Small, yes deleted

Here we should remember the American GBU-39 guided bomb unit, which has been in service with the US Air Force since 2006. Its weight is a modest 285 pounds (130 kg), but it compensates for the small caliber with other properties.

Due to its length of 1,8 m and body diameter of 0,19 m, the air bomb has an ESR of about 0,015 m2, which makes it difficult to repel a massive attack by such means using air defense systems. Moreover, the ammunition is equipped with folding wings, and at the moment of separation from the aircraft it has a speed of more than 2000 km/h. This allows a gliding bomb to fly up to 10 km when leaving the suspension of a supersonic fighter at an altitude of 110 km. The new version of the GBU-53/B bomb received a tri-band seeker, combining inertial guidance using GPS, infrared and active radar homing, and the most modern ones are capable of targeting a source of interference for the GPS system.

The power of the warhead is enough to penetrate 90 cm of reinforced concrete. So much for the “ridiculous” 130 kg!

The Israelis also worked in the same direction, creating SPICE family of gliding bombs. The youngest aerial bomb in it, SPICE-250, has a caliber of 249 pounds, or 113 kg, inertial control with GPS correction (INS/GPS) in the middle part of the trajectory and electro-optical with autonomous image comparison algorithms - at the end it is capable of flying up to 100 km. The bomb can even hit moving targets.

But in the SPICE 250 ER (Extended Range) version, the gliding bomb is equipped with a miniature turbojet engine and a fuel system (JP-8/10 fuel), due to which the flight range has increased to 150 km. That is, this is already something between an aerial bomb and a low-cost cruise missile. The massive use of such ammunition can literally destroy any, even the most modern, air defense system.

A very interesting technical solution seems to be the creation of a ground-launched small-diameter bomb (English: Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb, GLSDB). The Americans simply coupled their GBU-39 with an M26 rocket motor, giving them the ability to launch glide bombs from the M270 and M142 HIMARS universal launchers.

The destruction range of the GLSDB is stated to be 150 km, target designation accuracy is preserved, and the cost consists of the GBU-39, which cost the Pentagon only 40 thousand dollars apiece, and a serial rocket engine, which acts as the first stage for the “winged” aerial bomb. The United States transferred these ammunition to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which gives them the ability to carry out high-precision bombing of Russian positions without the use of aircraft with target designation by satellite. Comfortable…

What if

The purpose of this publication is not to glorify the achievements of the American and Israeli military-industrial complex, but to find solutions for the most rational use of Russia’s military-technical resources. Wandering through the expanses of the Runet in search of technical information, the author of the lines had a chance to get acquainted with interesting ideas for creating a domestic response to GLSDB.

It should be pointed out once again that the line between gliding bombs, active rockets and missiles today has become very, very thin. For example, the UPAB-50 glide bomb, designed for use with Orion drones, has a warhead of 37 kg, is capable of flying up to 30 km and is based on the warhead from the old Grad MLRS. Unexpected, but at the same time quite expected.

The idea that I would like to voice to a wide audience is to create a Russian analogue of the GLSDB by combining a jet engine from a rocket for a Smerch or Tornado-S MLRS and a 100-kilogram bomb equipped with drop-down wings with a gliding correction module. By analogy with the M270 and M142 HIMARS, the MLRS will have to act as a ground launcher, the rocket engine as the first stage, throwing the bomb to its maximum height and range, and then it will rush to the target in gliding mode.

Such a technical solution would make it possible to significantly increase the range of domestic MLRS and allow the Ground Forces to begin using 100-kilogram bombs without involving aviation. If you increase the amount of fuel in a rocket engine, the destruction range will also increase.

The idea of ​​“marriing” a high-precision guided projectile of the “Krasnopol” type with an additional jet engine looks very bold. The latter is good in everything except the firing range. There are proposals to modify it so that it would be possible to launch an active-missile projectile from an MLRS in the first stage, similar to the GLSDB, and after undocking it would continue to move using its own standard engine. Obviously, such a modification will not be simple, but the range of the Krasnopol would increase very significantly as a result.